In a report made by KOB4, US state Arkansas sued YouTube and its parent company Alphabet, which also owns Google, arguing that the platform is addictive and deliberately causing mental health problems among the youth in the state.
The lawsuit claims the site is contributing to the mental health crisis that it has resulted in the “state spending millions on expanded mental health and other services for young people.”
“YouTube amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue,” the lawsuit said. “As a result, youth mental health problems have advanced in lockstep with the growth of social media, and in particular, YouTube.”
Google, which was named as defendant in the case, denied the claims of the lawsuit.
In a statement the spokesperson of Google, Jose Castaneda, said that, “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work. In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”
“The allegations in this complaint are simply not true.”
YouTube is not the only social media platform that Arkansas is targeting and moving to sue–there were similar lawsuits against TikTok and Facebook parent company Meta, where they claim that the social media companies were misleading consumers about the safety of children on their platforms and protections of users’ private data.
Those lawsuits are still pending in the US state court.
In Canada, four schools have filed a $4.5 billion lawsuit against TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat, claiming that their social media platforms “disrupt the education system.”
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